I became a steady collector of comic books in 1990. Before that, I had loved super-heroes, but lacking any steady place to pick up comics. It was always a few here and a few there. Over the last 20 years (with a short period of maybe 3 years when I had stopped collecting) I've amassed a huge collection of comic books. The problem is, I'm no longer a collector. I still love reading comic books, but I have no desire to store away every issue I can get my hands on in hopes of selling them for a large profit in the near future.

When I bought my first home and moved to Virginia from New Jersey in September, I realized that I had no space for 17 long boxes filled with comic books. There was no climate controlled area in my home that was out of the way of people.

Since I no longer had the emotional attachment to "collecting," I decided it was time to thin out the lot as much as possible. I'm keeping my Moon Knights and Aquamans. I'm keeping my Hellblazers. There is a decent amount of stuff that I'm still holding on to, but I seriously wanted (and needed) to drop as many as I could.

What to do? I couldn't sell them. Most comic book stores that buy whole collections would offer about $500.00 ($1,000 if you're lucky) despite me having some good books from the pre-90's boom. I could list as much as possible on eBay, but that's just a pain in the ass.

I wanted to do something that would benefit others. Maybe get some younger kids into reading comics, which would hopefully springboard them into books. You know... reading is fundamental, even though most kids don't read anymore. So I decided to donate the majority of my collection to charity. I found a really nice charity online. I'm just waiting for a call back.